This week’s mystery movie has been the 1948 Warner Bros. picture “Romance on the High Seas,” with Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don De Fore, Doris Day, Oscar Levant, S.Z. Sakall, Fortunio Bonanova, Eric Blore, William Bakewell, Franklin Pangborn, Avon Long and the Samba Kings. The screenplay was by Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein with additional dialogue by I.A.L. Diamond, from a story by S. Pondal Rios and Carlos A. Olivari. Photography was by Elwood Bredell, art direction by Anton Grot, special effects by David Curtiz, special effects photography by Wilfred M. Cline and Robert Burks, set decorations by Howard Winterbottom, wardrobe by Milo Anderson, makeup by Perc Westmore, musical direction by Leo F. Forbstein, musical numbers orchestrated and conducted by Ray Heindorf, music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Cahn, musical numbers created and directed by Busby Berkeley, produced by Alex Gottlieb and directed by Michael Curtiz.

I don’t usually do mystery films with a time peg, but on a recent trip to the Monterey area, I was reminded of Doris Day’s birthday (April 3), which is being celebrated this weekend in Carmel.

As much as we all like to welcome new faces and talents to the screen, it is hard to work up enthusiasm for the Warners’ new starlet, Doris Day. Maybe this bouncy young lady, who came directly from singing with bands to a leading role in that studio’s color musical, “Romance on the High Seas,” has ability and personality. But as shown in this picture at the Strand, she has no more than a vigorous disposition which hits the screen with a thud.”

The fault is not hers entirely. If the Warners had tried to pick a show in which a new and untested personality was least likely to succeed, they couldn’t have done much better than this woeful banality. It’s a scatterbrained comedy of errors in which the identities of several people are confused, for completely preposterous reasons, in the course of a South American cruise. And as a brash little night-club singer who is supposed to act like a swell, Miss Day is most plainly the victim of the writers’ unutterable ennui.

For Monday, we have a mystery gent. His companion has been cropped out due to a total lack of mysteriousness and will appear later.

Update: This is William Bakewell.

For Tuesday, we have a formally dressed mystery gent who appears many years later in one of our favorite films. The (Update: second) leading man, alas, has been cropped out due to his utter lack of mysteriousness. He will appear Friday.

I saw this about two years ago …I remembered having seen it as a nine year old. It is a surprisingly good film …directed by Michael Curtiz …who gave us some of WB’s great classics. However I am always puzzled by the extremely long kiss at the end; it seems to defy all pictorial logic.